Putting a Price on Social Connections

This is a Businessweek Online article that I thought would be interesting to share with y'all written by Stephen Baker.

(Editor's note: This is the first in a series, Value of Virtual Friends, exploring the ways our lives are affected -- financially and otherwise -- by the multiplicity of online social and professional contacts.)

Messaging with the boss much? Maybe you ought to be. Workers who have strong communication ties with their managers tend to bring in more money than those who steer clear of the boss, according to a new analysis of social networks in the workplace by IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The research, released this week, even assigns a dollar value to e-mail interaction with an employee's managers. Among the group studied, several thousand consultants at IBM, those with strong links to a manager produced an average of $588 of revenue per month over the norm.

The results represent an early attempt to understand the value of the broadening variety of personal connections afforded by the Web. Users of social media rack up LinkedIn contacts, Facebook friends, and Twitter followers by the hundreds, if not thousands. But figuring out how big a difference all those contacts make in a person's life, financial or otherwise, is a far murkier matter.

That's why leading tech companies, including IBM, Microsoft (NasdaqGS:MSFT - News), and Yahoo! (NasdaqGS:YHOO - News), are hiring economists, anthropologists, and other social scientists to map and classify new types of friendships -- and put a value on them.

Researchers at IBM Research and MIT's Sloan School of Management found that the average e-mail contact was worth $948 in revenue. To unearth that and other data, they used mathematical formulas to analyze the e-mail traffic, address books, and buddy lists of 2,600 IBM consultants over the course of a year. (Their identities were shielded from researchers, who viewed them only as encrypted numbers, known as hash codes.) They compared the communication patterns with performance, as measured by billable hours.

Thinking Out Loud

I had a few minutes to myself today contemplating on how blessed I am. I have a well-paying job that gives me not only fulfillment but finances my needs and wants as well. Come to think of it, I really do not have any complaints. I have grown so much as a person and as a leader ever since I was hired and started last 2005. This job I have now is the longest that I have stayed in a company (this after all is just my 3rd job).

It is way too different from my first job. I can remember how nervous I am when I started taking calls and how this one supervisor made me cry on fateful night by blaming my long call as the culprit for the team not having pizza. I've grown from an irate tech to a much more matured leader. Someone who does not just think of herself but thinks of her team always, all the time. This job that I have now is much more different than the one I had in a bank where I used to work. For now, I can exercise my full potential. I like how I can decide and implement action plans. I like how I can brainstorm with equally-competent members of my team. I like how they can openly give me constructive feedback. I like how dynamic the environment is.

I have never expected that I am employed by Dell for almost 3 years already, 3 long eventful years. I have shed tears and I have had sleepless nights trying to figure out how I can function better, how I can be rated exceptional. The only regret I have had maybe is applying for the much-talked about position back in 2006. It was I guess a wrong career move and a right career move at the same time. Wrong because the expectations that were promised to me never came into reality and that I did not have solid numbers to back my claim that I was working, developing my team, advocating the process. It was right because I was able to learn efficient and effective deescalation process. It was right because I was able to work with wonderful people who taught me patience and perseverance.

I believe having this job I love is such a blessing. I never had any complaints. What I have is chestful of memories and learnings and realizations. All I have is a chance to be able to work on my competencies. All I have is a chance to be a better leader, a better manager. What I need to do is to just take advantage of what I have and work on areas for improvement and maintain my strengths and for sure I will be on my way to getting back that exceptional rating all over again.